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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • To extend this a little bit, I’m not convinced “is X conscious?” is really the question anyone is trying to answer. What I think we’re really trying to sus out is “does X require rights?” and where is the line for that.

    As another commenter asked, something like “is turning this off equivalent to murder?” is effectively asking if the thing deserves a “right to life” like any human might. At what point does a “thinking machine” cross the line from “person-like” to “person”? I doubt anyone has a satisfactory answer to that question and, unfortunately, I strongly doubt we’ll have one until well after it’s actually needed.

    I think grappling with that question is maybe a little more straightforward when we consider other animals we already consider highly intelligent (e.g. pigs, dolphins, or octopi) but that we don’t give the same kinds of rights to that we would a human. At what point would we consider a non-human animal to be equal to ourselves? How many person-like traits does something need before it is a person?

    Anyways, all that aside, I think we should start asking the questions we’re really trying to answer and stop using other questions as proxies for that one.




  • In situations like this, the answer isn’t to argue over the interpretation of the words: it’s to fix the words.

    If the writers intended “no excessive capitalization or excessive grammatical errors”, then it should be changed to that.

    If the writers intended “no excessive capitalization and no grammatical errors”, then it should be changed to that.

    Both situations remove the ambiguity and prevent pedantic internet arguments about language interpretation.




  • There are places to work that aren’t complete dogshit, but you do have to avoid FinTech, FAANG, and probably anything with a lot of VC funding. You will make less money, but at least you won’t be asked to do morally reprehensible shit on the regular.

    Some of my best experiences have actually been at non-tech companies with small IT teams for internal shit. Biggest team I’ve ever worked on was 30 devs and that’s probably about the largest team I’d want to work with.

    EDIT: This does assume you’re working in the States which is a dumb assumption for me to make. I’m not familiar with the culture outside of the states, but I imagine it’s better than here.


  • I think the biggest problem is that the idea of copyright is good, but the implementation - in most places, anyways - is complete dogshit.

    Like, I’m fairly certain the original implementation of copyright in the US only lasted 10 years or thereabouts. Like, that’s more than enough time to profit off whatever you made but short enough that it’ll be usable by others within their lifetimes. This whole “life of the author + 100 years” shit needs to die.













  • I read a decent rebuttal to the “paradox” of tolerance. To summarize for those that don’t know, the idea is that tolerance is a social contract. You tolerate everyone that’s behaving according to the contract. Refusing to tolerate someone that has broken the contract isn’t a violation of the contract; it’s required in order to enforce the contract.

    You break the rules, you lose the protections. Simple as.